


Say It In A Story

by cecilia095



Category: New Girl
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 18:00:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8023636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilia095/pseuds/cecilia095
Summary: "Forever doesn't sound scary when you're the one saying it."





	Say It In A Story

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a l'il spoiler I read about Nick spending season six writing a new book, or something. It gave me this idea and I just had to run with it!! I know, I know, I haven't picked up my laptop in MONTHS let alone WRITTEN SOMETHING, but I HAD TO. I missed you all and I hope this piece can make up for me being a little absent in the fic world. 
> 
> Happy almost season six, kiddos! <333

 

It's not September 3rd, but Nick is back from New Orleans anyway.

"You got frail, my man," Schmidt says, giving Nick's bicep a squeeze. "I'm still very into your beard, though."

"And to think you'd stop hitting on me after you got married," Nick says in one breath, and he pulls Schmidt in for a tight hug anyway.

Cece hugs him next, and then Winston joins in, and then the three of them are standing in the middle of the loft in one big, awkward, three-man circle, until Jess clears her throat.

"Nick," she says lowly, stepping forward. Her hands are at her side, and she doesn't race to hug him -- even though she definitely  _wants to_. The 'Getting-Over-Nick-Because-You-Can't-Get- _Under_ -Nick' thing is eating her alive, but she smiles at him and says, "Welcome back, weirdo" like she normally would.

No one asks how Reagan is, how  _he and Reagan_  are, why he's back three weeks early, why his eyes look a little heavy, why he doesn't have any luggage with him. They're just glad he's back; so glad that Winston makes him special 'Welcome back' crêpes, and Schmidt kisses him flat on the mouth and it  _isn't_  cheating on his wife, okay?, and Cece breathes a sigh of relief because the bar isn't the same without Nick's chaotic but appreciated management skills.

It's 7:00 when Nick finally goes in his room for the first time. "Jet lag, or something", he says, and he only closes the door behind him halfway.

"Hey Miller," a voice in the doorway says. Nick blinks at her and waves her in. "I wasn't going to ask you, I  _really_  wasn't, but..."

"Reagan and I are fine, we're just... Sometimes too much of one thing isn't good for you, you know?"

Jess bites her lip but she doesn't say anything. She thinks about having 'too much' of Nick Miller, and then she tells herself that can't be a thing, because she spent this entire summer wishing she had even  _a little_  Nick Miller.

"I mean... You do know. Remember why  _we_  broke up?" He gestures to him, and then to her, and then he lets out this husky laugh. "I see everyone is just as crazy as they were when I left. Maybe crazier. Do you know Winston has a life-sized cutout of Paula Deen in his bedroom. Um.  _Why_?"

"He really got into cooking this summer," Jess says, cringing jokingly. "But hey, what's that supposed to mean; we're crazy? What about you, Miller? What, you just left all of your weirdness in New Orleans and came back as...  _this_?"

"What's ' _this_ ', Jessica? I lost a whole pants size, and I'm not even wearing flannel. I'm the best version of myself."

Jess has to refrain from rolling her eyes, so she just folds her arms across her chest and nods. "I liked you just fine before you left. Look, I don't know what happened this summer, because you  _rarely_  updated your Facebook statuses and you might've answered like... two of Schmidt's texts, but if -- if Reagan told you any part of you needed changing, Nick, it --"

"Jess, I think you're forgetting that you thought the same thing back when we were together," he says, and then she shuts up and walks right out of his room and doesn't even eat one of Winston's crêpes.

—

Nick works a lot. He's making up for lost time, and he's  _really_  bitter at how much tip money Cece made while he was gone. 

He works the day shift on a Monday, and he only has seventeen dollars in the tip bucket when he counts it at two o'clock, but he's still glad he's not house hunting with The Schmidt's.

Winston doesn't go either because Aly just dropped the bomb on him that her FBI training course starts tomorrow in  _Virginia_ , so obviously he's scheduled for a good cry until  _at least_  ten o'clock tonight.

Jess has nothing to do after school though, so she joins Cece and Schmidt while they look at this rundown 'fixer-upper' just thirteen minutes from the loft, and she almost cries as hard as Schmidt does when he realizes the floor in the bathroom is marble. 

"Wait, why are  _you_  crying?", he asks her as he wipes at his eyes with the sleeve of his sweater. "You  _definitely_  look like a marble floor kind of gal."

"I  _am_ , I just --" Jess smacks her lips together and looks at Schmidt, who  _might_  still be crying, and then at Cece, who  _might_  be rolling her eyes in the middle of Option Never, Number Four. "Without you guys living in the loft, it's just... It's me and Nick and Winston."

"So?", asks Cece, because Nick and Winston are their friends, and Jess will never go hungry because they're the two best grocery shoppers. (She might have to pee outside in a bush though, because they're also the two best toilet cloggers.)

" _So_." Jess clears her throat, and then she looks at Cece in a panic because Cece knows and Schmidt  _might_  know, but she's not sure. Do husbands and wives really tell each other  _everything_ , or are there exceptions? "If Winston really does end up with Aly -- and, look, I hope he does. I mean, who else is going to let him keep that horrible Paula Deen cutout in his bedroom? Aly will! --, then it's just me and Nick, and that's...  _messy_."

"Because you're in love with him?", Schmidt asks a second later, and all Jess does is yell, "Cece!"

"I didn't tell him!", Cece says, both of her arms up in surrender. "He just knew, okay? Can you blame him? You fell asleep in Nick's bed three times this summer, cuddled up against a pair of his dirty gym shorts. That's love."

"It's also  _unsanitary_. Jessica, do you  _know_  what Nicholas smells like?", asks Schmidt, wrinkling his nose. "I mean, he'll never smell like the cologne I bought him three Hanukkah's ago because he's stubborn and has too much pride to wear ninety-dollar cologne, but that's a story for another time."

"Or not, babe," says Cece, grabbing Schmidt by the arm and shaking her head. "Jess, no one knows why he came back from New Orleans three weeks early, but I  _do_  know it wasn't for me or Schmidt or Winston."

"Um, I hate to rain on your parade, honey, but there's a better chance he came back for me than any of  _you_  dingbats."

" _Schmidt_..."

"I wasn't singling you out -- you're  _all_  dingbats."

" _Schmidt_."

"I changed my mind; I'm not going to miss you two at all."

"Take it back, Jessica!"

"Look," Jess says, "you guys might be insane, but you keep me  _sane_. Without you two around, I might cave and say something really, really dumb to Nick that'll cause me to blow it forever."

"Let's be honest here, honey. You'll probably do that with us right there in the room."

" _Schmidt_."

"I'm just going through a lot, okay? Between Nick, and that third grader that threw up on my tulle skirt at Show 'N Tell last week, and --"

Schmidt holds a finger up and wags it at her. "Never. Wear. Tulle. Skirts. You. Degenerate."

"You said it was nice when I walked out of the house wearing it!"

"Yeah, because you'd spent the entire morning sobbing about Nick into your bowl of Cap'n Crunch. I was trying to lift you up, Jess."

"I didn't need  _lifting_ , Schmidt. It's a beautiful skirt and I already  _knew that_  before you  _commented_  on it."

"Well here's another comment: Tulle sucks, Day, and so does Nick. I mean, he's my best friend in the entire universe, and if soulmates exist, he's probably mi --"

"Really, we're doing this," Cece interrupts.

"But you can do better than that  _disgusting pig person_  and you know it."

"Ugh. Just take back the freakin' tulle comment, Schmidt!"

"Both of you!", Cece yells. "Shut up and help me run out of this disgusting house so we can get to our next inevitably disappointing option on time."

—

Nick calls out of work on Saturday morning because of a fever, but Winston tells Jess he walked in on him typing what looked like his zombie novel just before.

"Maybe it's a distraction from that thing we call  _Reagan_ ," Winston says, rolling his eyes.

"Wait, I thought you liked Reagan," Jess tells him. She remembers them being friends, and texting about cat food or  _Seinfeld_  or something a few weeks ago.

"Reagan's a woman, and right now, I don't like any women. What's-Her-Name left for Virginia and hasn't even texted me, Jess. I. Want. To. Die."

"Alright, I'm not even taking sides here, but isn't she in training for the FBI or something super important like that?", Jess asks, and she tries not to laugh at Winston's dramatics. Aly loves Winston more than she loves motorcycle gangs and Paula Deen, and that's  _a lot_. 

"She doesn't have access to a phone until her training's complete," Winston says with a huff, and then he slams his fork down into his plate of half-eaten pancakes and sniffles. "I want to marry that girl, Jessica, I do. When you feel that way about someone, going a freakin'  _day_  without talking to them feels like a life-or-death situation."

Jess swallows thickly, and then she thinks about the ninety-five days where she heard from Nick like,  _once_. In a text. It went: ' **Hey. NOLA is sweet. Lots of taco shops. I smoked a joint in one of them. Rock on, J-Day.** '

"I know you do, Winston," Jess says, dropping her own fork down into her own plate of pancakes, not even caring that it landed in a blob of maple syrup. "And you will. You'll marry her, and she'll let you keep your awful cat in whatever house you live in, and she'll even give him that atrocious butt pill."

"I can't believe you  _still_  can't do that. It's so easy, Jess!"

"Yeah, I bet it is."

—

Cece and Schmidt sign the lease on their first house in the last week of September. It's a three-bedroom,  _non-marbled-bathroom-floor_ , little house a hop away from the loft, and they're  _so happy_.

Jess and Winston bake them a cake, and Nick writes them a fourteen-minute-long speech about the fact that they can now, 'do it anytime, anywhere', and Schmidt interrupts him during minute twelve-and-a-half and shouts, "We already do, you buffoon! How many times do you think we took advantage of your vacant room this summer, Nicholas? Despite the disgusting  _crumbs_  on your sheets, I'm pretty sure we had baby-making sex in your bed, man."

Nick drops his speech paper at his side and looks right at Schmidt. "You  _better_  have not made a kid on my crumb-infested bed, you  _dick_."

After they cut the cake, Jess walks into Cece and Schmidt's half-packed-up bedroom and sits on the edge of their mattress. "Congratulations, kids. You did it!"

Cece sits down next to her and rests her head on Jess's shoulder, letting out a sigh. Schmidt's sealing a box labeled, "POCKET SQUARES", and he looks onto the both of them with a grin.

"It's not gonna be the same," Cece says, "but that's okay."

"Exactly. It's gonna be  _better_. I mean, that guest room is  _huge_ , you guys. I'm thinking of moving in temporarily. You know, just a spot I can runaway to when Nick and Winston annoy me."

"That room, Jess, is for when we have a baby. Are you a baby?"

"Um,  _absolutely_. I cried six times today, and it's only three o'clock."

Cece laughs and smooches Jess on the cheek. "It's gonna be  _fine_ , babe."

"Go get me another slice of cake and then we can talk 'fine'."

—

Nick closes his laptop  _so fast_  when Jess walks into the kitchen on Sunday morning. She doesn't ask why, or what the hell he's hiding from her; she just walks over to the cabinet and gets some cereal and holds the box out to him.

"I know it's the healthy kind, but I saw you eating it once."

"Once. I was hammered, and I just picked the berries out of it."

"Figured I'd ask," she says, wrinkling her nose. She sits down next to him on the island, and his laptop is still closed. "Winston says you're finally finishing your zombie novel."

"Winston is an  _idiot_ , first of all. My zombie novel has been finished since like, 2012."

Jess rolls her eyes and wants to ask him more than just what the hell is on that laptop, but she just eats her cereal and stays quiet.

"I-I'm writing a new book, okay?", Nick says after what feels like an hour of silence between them. 

He catches Jess's attention and she drops her spoon into her cereal, pivoting her butt in her chair so she's half-facing him.

"What's it about?", she asks.

"I can't tell you that part. You'll see it when it's done, okay?"

Jess just nods slowly and goes, "O...kay."

"Jess, come on, it's nothing bad, and I'm not hiding it from you, I just -- I have to make sure it's good. And not zombie novel-good. Like,  _real_  good."

"What's it about?", she asks curiously, and she doesn't mean to be nosy, but it's Nick, and she missed him, and she always cares about what he's doing even if it's not cool or interesting. It's probably another Twilight knock-off, but she still wants to know.

"You really wanna know, huh?", he says teasingly, and Jess nods and goes, " _Duh_ ".

"Fine. It's about a girl. Or for a girl, if you wanna get specific. Good?"

Jess feels her throat close, and she just nods and mumbles a, "Good" to him, even though her stomach sinks at the thought of who it's about and who it's for. She's just glad he didn't say Reagan's name.

—

Jess gets to Cece and Schmidt's before anyone else does on Halloween. They're both running around like they've got no heads because it's the first party they're throwing as a married couple in their first home, and, "THE PUNCH ISN'T RED ENOUGH, CECELIA! WE'RE AIMING FOR BLOOD RED, -- NOTHING MORE, NOTHING LESS!"

"Are you regretting this at all yet?", Jess asks with a laugh as she sets out a tray of pumpkin-shaped cookies onto Cece and Schmidt's dining room table. 

"I hate Halloween, but I love him," Cece says calmly, just shrug-laughing at the fact that her manic husband is running around with a bag of fake bones and throwing them all over the living room floor.

"Fair enough," says Jess, wrapping one of her arms around Cece's shoulder. "So are you finally gonna cave and tell your best friend that you're pregnant, or we're still pretending you're not up to a DD cup already?"

Cece folds her arms across her chest and steps away from Jess. "He doesn't know yet, and I haven't had time to tell him."

"Right, you just had time to help him spray paint two-hundred bones yesterday night in silence."

"Two-hundred-six," Cece corrects her with a pointed finger. "We wanted accuracy."

"How far along are you?", Jess whispers.

"Not far along enough to where I can't get away with not telling him. He's going through a lot, okay? We just moved into this place, and Kim just demoted him at work, and yesterday I spilled orange juice  _all over_  our new carpet in the bedroom. I can't break the news to him yet. Give the stain like... a week to fade."

"Ceec, a baby is a good thing. We need some good things to happen around here."

Cece drops her arms and fidgets with the punch bowl, and then she looks at Jess with narrow eyes. "Fine. I'll tell him tonight, but you better not drunkenly spill the beans first."

—

Jess drunkenly spills the beans four Bloody Mary's in, and Schmidt asks Cece if it's true and then cries. 

"Twenty-percent because you hid it from me even though I  _knew_  because your boobs are  _gigantic_  right now, but eighty-percent because I'm the happiest man alive."

Jess and Winston watch their best friends with tears in their eyes, and then ten seconds later, an almost too-drunk Nick Miller squeezes Jess and Winston from behind and goes, "Baby. Miracle. Made that in my bed. Booyah!"

—

"How's your book coming along?", Jess asks, pulling her tea bag out of her mug and setting it on the counter. 

Nick cringes at that and picks it up, tossing it behind him into the sink on top of a bunch of dirty plates. "Sorry. I hate messes."

"Since when?! I would've cleaned it up. Now you just got it all over our dirty dishes. Whatever, Winston's problem."

"Exactly," Nick says with a smirk. He shuts his laptop and Jess huffs. "What?"

"You always shut that thing every time I walk into the room. Come on, give me a sneak peek."

"I told you, no spoilers. Now go do whatever you do on Saturdays and let me write in peace. Where's Winston? Aren't you two going apple picking or something?"

"He's visiting Aly down in Virginia for the weekend, and he's also terribly allergic to apples, so no, we're not. It's just me and you, kid."

Nick smirks again, and he looks right into her eyes. "Fine, I'll give you a sneak peek of my book," he says.

Jess bites the inside of her cheek, because as much as it hurts her to hear about Reagan, she can listen to Nick talk about nearly anything. (Except life on Mars. It gets very heated and weird and last time they argued about it both of them cried for like, five hours straight.)

"It's about being with someone forever, or if that's even possible. Now that I think about it, it's stupid as hell, but I don't know, it's almost better than  _Z is For Zombie_ , I think."

"Hmm." Jess closes her eyes for a second, and then she internally cringes at the thought of Nick and Reagan and  _forever_. He hasn't even mentioned her name in weeks. Last she heard, they spoke on the phone two Wednesday's ago, and the call lasted less than three minutes. "Do you not think that's possible?"

"What, being with someone forever? I don't know. That's what I'm writing the book for."

"You know," Jess breathes out, folding her hands on the countertop, "forever doesn't sound scary when you're the one saying it."

Nick laughs sincerely, and he looks at her like he might want to say, "Ditto!", or something stupid like that, but he just smiles. 

"Sorry. I didn't mean -- Look, everything between us is history, it is, but sometimes I just..."

"I know," he interrupts. "Me too."

"I'm sorry."

"Jess, you don't have to be sorry, it's okay."

—

Jess goes with Cece to her ultrasound because Schmidt's summoned to stay hours and hours late at work for almost no reason. (Kim hates him, and she  _definitely_  hates anything that was made using Schmidt sperm, by default, so, "No, I don't care that you're missing your ultrasound. That's what they print the pictures out for at the end, dummy.")

Cece's sixteen weeks pregnant, and the ultrasound tech lets her know that she's far along enough to find out the gender of her baby, if she wants to. "You and your partner both look more than ready to know," she says, and Cece's eyes widen.

"This is my best friend slash substitute husband for the day,  _not_  my life partner," she says, rubbing her lips together. She squeezes Jess's hand tighter and tells the girl she can't find out without Schmidt there. "He'd kill me. Throwing a gender reveal party gives him a reason to wake up in the morning."

"Wow," Jess says in shock, looking at an actual, moving baby on the monitor in front of she and Cece. Cece's weirdly calm about the whole thing, and she's the one doing the baby-having. Jess laces her fingers through Cece's and tells her she can't believe Schmidt is missing this.

"Don't remind me," Cece says, choking up for the first time since the appointment started. 

The ultrasound tech finishes up, prints out some pictures, and then Jess helps Cece off of the bed.

Jess grabs the pictures from the ultrasound tech and then turns to Cece, who's finding the most convenient way to pull her almost-too-tight jeans up and over her growing middle. "That was..." 

"I know," Cece says, giving up on her jeans and leaving them unzipped. "Thank you for coming with me and not freaking out when that chick accidentally squirted all of that gel on your leg."

"That was definitely my least favorite part," she says, laughing and looping her arm through Cece's. "I can't believe you're gonna be a  _mom_ , Ceec."

"Tell me about it," says Cece, pressing her lips together and leaning into Jess. 

"I wonder when I'll get my crap together the way you have your crap together," Jess says as they're leaving the office. Cece just rolls her eyes. "What? I'm serious! You have a house with a working toilet, a husband who buys you flowers on random days of the week like, I don't know, a  _Tuesday_ , just so you don't forget how much he loves you, and in five months, you'll be popping  _that_ out of  _there_ ," she says, pointing to Cece's stomach and then to what's in between her legs.

"Don't remind me," Cece says with a huff, running a hand over her belly and trying to do her best to forget that video called  _Childbirth Is A Wonderful Thing!_ Winston sent to her email last week. "Jess, just because Nick hasn't dropped everything to run into your arms yet doesn't mean you don't have your crap together. If you ask me, you're a very well-off human being, and I'm not just saying that because I'm your best friend. I would tell you if you were crappy!"

"Wait.  _Yet_? You said 'yet'."

"I said  _what_? Jessica, stop looking into it and hold these for me," Cece says, passing Jess the folder with all of the baby's pictures in it so she can dig for her keys. "I didn't mean anything by 'yet'; I didn't even mean to say 'yet'."

"But you said it. You said 'yet'. Is Nick -- Does he --"

Cece stops Jess and grabs her keys out of her bag, and then she shakes her head at her. "Babe, you have to just trust that things are the way they are for a reason. That's it. Nick or no Nick, you're still Jessica Day, and you're still the best, okay?"

Jess doesn't say anything back, just hands Cece back the envelope with all of the ultrasound pictures, and then she thinks about Nick for only a third of the car ride home.

—

Aly surprise-attacks Winston in the doorway on December 23rd, and everyone is screaming because they're so happy to see her, and they're so happy for Winston because Depressed Winston is the worst. (Not as bad as Evil Winston, but  _bad_.)

She drops her bags, one arm still looped around Winston's neck, and then she looks onto everybody else. "Nick, that eggnog you're drinking looks gross. Jess! You look beautiful in red and I  _will_  hug you in three seconds. Cece, pregnancy looks way better on you than Winston said it did, and Schmidt, you  _also_  look pregnant. Stop wearing collared shirts underneath your sweaters."

"Glad to have you back,  _Aly_ ," Schmidt says with a snicker, stripping out of his sweater and throwing it at her jokingly. "But really, we are  _so_  happy to see you. I can't take any more of Winston's suicidal midnight phone calls."

—

Jess remembers Nick mentioning something about Reagan and Christmas and maybe Reagan visiting  _on_  Christmas, but it's December 25th and there's no Reagan and Nick hasn't moved from his laptop and he's also very drunk on eggnog. 

"Everyone's so stupidly happy," Jess says, sitting down next to him in the living room. "It makes me want to puke, but like, in a good way."

Nick doesn't close his laptop this time, and instead, he leans over onto the coffee table and grabs something in red and gold wrapping paper with a  _very_  crooked bow on top. "Merry Christmas, Jess."

"What? For -- Wait, what is this?"

"No one is supposed to ask, 'What is this?', you just... open it," Nick says with a laugh, shoving his laptop aside and ripping the bow off of the top. "Sorry, the bow was supposed to look nice, but I also put it on when I was very drunk."

"You're  _still_  very drunk, Miller."

"Touché, Day."

Jess sets the gift down in her lap, but she doesn't open it. She's almost afraid to, like once she does she's going to be disappointed or heartbroken or both.

"Jess, don't just... hold it. Open it! It's for you and I didn't even screw up the wrapping that bad, so just... open it. Please, Jess."

It takes her another minute to get her shit together, but she slowly peels off the wrapping paper, only to reveal a giant stack of paper inside. Literally, just paper on top of paper on top of paper, but it's nicely bound and Nick is looking at her with hopeful eyes when he tells her, "Read the title."

"365 Days of Jess," she says lowly, skimming her finger across the first page. "What's -- Is this -- Nick, is this your book?", she asks with narrowed eyes.

"Uh-huh."

"Nick."

"Jess."

"Your book is about  _me_?"

"My book is about you, Jessica."

"But what about -- I thought -- You said --"

"If it were for Reagan, for  _anyone else_ , I wouldn't have hidden it from you. Schmidt thought it was about him at one point, but I put that rumor to rest on page twenty-three when I talked about that sexy birthmark you have on your chest."

She blushes at that, and then she thinks about something for a minute. "Everyone else  _knew_?", Jess asks curiously, the stack of paper still in her lap. "Why didn't anyone tell me?"

"Because I asked them not to. Jess, this book is everything I've felt about you from the day we broke up until now. Just... You don't have to forgive me right away, and you don't have to be with me right away, -- or at all, okay, I'm not -- this book isn't me pressuring you. Jess, I just want you to read the whole thing one day to better understand the way I feel about you."

Nick (drunkenly) leaves the living room then, and Jess just watches him walk into his bedroom and stay there.

She reads the book in one night, start to finish, all 365 days of it.

—

"Wake up, Nick!"

Nick's startled, but he throws all of his blankets off of him and onto the end of his bed, and he smiles at Jess in a way he has dozens and dozens of times before, but this time it's different.

"You read the damn book already, didn't you."

"The whole damn thing," she says, and she looks at the clock. It's 3:45 in the morning.

"And...?"

Jess just stares at him; stares at his sleepiness and stares at the way he looks at her like he's just as in love with her as he was the first time he ever said he was. She can't believe she missed it. 

"Did you come back from New Orleans just to write  _that_?", she asks him, and then she pulls out the book from behind her back and sets it down on the bed.

"I did," he says confidently, more confidently than Nick Miller has said anything else in months and months and months. "Being away from you only made me realize everything I wrote down and more."

"The last page," Jess says, gesturing to the book. "You want that? _For real_ want that?"

"That's why I wrote it," he says bashfully, and then he picks the book up off of his bed. "Jessica, I don't have a ring yet, and I don't even know how to propose to someone because I'm not Schmidt and I didn't embarrassingly accidentally propose to my now-wife a bunch of times before the actual thing, but you -- You deserve to know that when I was talking about forever in my book, I meant it, one-thousand percent. I want that with you, nobody else."

Jess says 'yes' a bunch of times, and then she falls into his body and kisses him in ways they've probably kissed hundreds of times before, but this time feels different and permanent and  _for real_.

 


End file.
